Simeon Booker died. He was 99 years old. He had been the first Black reporter at the Washington Post, but he found his assignments unsatisfying, and left for an offer to be DC Bureau Chief for Johnson Publications, publisher of both Jet and Ebony.
Robinson’s column is titled A reporter who stood up to far worse than journalists get from Trump. Here is his first paragraph:
The great Simeon Booker, one of the bravest journalists of our time, faced dangers far worse than a petulant president’s social media feed. Booker refused to be cowed — and ultimately helped change the nation. His life’s work should be a lesson to us all about the power of truth to vanquish evil.
You will in the column learn much of why Robinson calling Booker “one of the bravest journalists of our times” is no exaggeration. Perhaps all you need to know is that when Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of Emmett Till, received the body of her son, Booker was there:
Booker wrote: “Her face wet with tears, she leaned over the body, just removed from a rubber bag in a Chicago funeral home, and cried out, ‘Darling, you have not died in vain. Your life has been sacrificed for something.’ ”
Jet photographer David Jackson took photographs of Till’s brutalized body that remain among the most searing and indelible images of the century.
Robinson pivots — reminding us that Booker’s death comes at a crucial time for US journalism:
Booker’s death comes at a moment when journalism and the civic necessity it seeks to provide — truth — are under assault.
He reminds us of all the attacks Trump has unleashed on the media, including demanding that individual journalists be fired, then says simply
Journalism’s response must be to tell the president — politely, with all due respect to the office — to stuff it.
I am now going to push fair use, and examine each of the three remaining paragraphs remaining in this superb column.
First is this, immediately after what I have just quoted:
There are facts. There is truth. We try our best to get everything right, but of course we sometimes make errors. When we do, we must correct them promptly and fully — and move on. The only “fake news” is the self-serving rubbish Trump tries to peddle through insistent repetition. No matter how often he lies, it is our job to call him on his lying. Every single time.
I am glad to see that Robinson is far more blunt than many major figures in the media have been — being afraid of the “L” word — lying. Truth has been what has been under attack, from the fake statements that Trump has offered — his unceasing lies, well document by among other Robinson’s paper.
Next, comes this:
One of the media’s most important roles in our democracy is to hold public officials accountable, and if they don’t like it, too bad. When they lash out at us viciously and unfairly, as Trump so often does, we should remember all the brave journalists who have faced much worse.
much worse in recent years American journalists have been killed in combat zones, been captured. Journalists from other countries have been tortured and murdered, among other places in countries with autocratic and tyrannical leaders that Trump admires, in Putin’s Russia, in Erdogan’s Turkey, in Duterte’s Philippines.
Which brings Robinson back to where he started, with the magnificent Simeon Booker:
More than once, Simeon Booker had to escape from Southern towns where white vigilante mobs were on the prowl to “get that man from Jet.”We should be able to withstand a few nasty tweets.
Indeed. And were Trump a wiser man, one with a modicum of common sense, he would realize the power of threat — or is it a promise — in that final paragraph.
Go read the entire column. Here again is the link. You will be glad you did.